Accessibility Read out loud_Need SDK Automation

[santhoshr29800103]

Hi,

We are creating accessibility PDF through Acrobat Professional Xi and DC from PDF input. We have a below special requirements about Read Out Loud from our client for the following behaviour.

1. For cross-references to notes: Our customer wants when the screen reader reads the Footnote citation, afterwards it should reads the corresponding Footnote text.   

2. For internal cross-references: Same as in above. When the screen reader reads the internal cross reference such as year, then it should read the corresponding Author in the Reference section.

Also, internal cross references like, See Chapter2, See table 1.1, See figure 1.2 citations, We need to provide the Alt text like (Please see "Table 2.1" for your more reference)

3. For external cross-references and web links: The Alt text of the cross-reference should be read out load, then continue with the text of the paragraph.

Please let me know how could be automate this requirement in PDF using Adobe Acrobat Pro or is there any SDK available for this. Whether it is feasible to do in the SDK, please suggest.

Thanks,

Santhosh

[Test Screen Name]

If your interest is accessibility, "read out loud" is the wrong tool. This is not for accessibility. Use an accessibility screen reader. I don't know, though, whether you can set up the PDF in such a way that it follows the reading order you want; this is about making the PDF, not about automating the screen reader.

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom]

@santhoshr29800103, Acrobat's built-in Read Out Loud (ROL) utility is not a screen reader, but instead is a low-end text-to-speech synthesizer.

So ROL isn't able to do any of the requirements listed in your post. You'll need to use a fully PDF/UA compliant screen reader, such as NVDA and JAWS to have those user features.

• https://www.nvaccess.org/download/
• https://www.freedomscientific.com/

ROL was developed about 20 years ago, long before we had tags in PDF and the PDF/UA-1 standard (first released in 2012). Today, it's considered a useless piece of crap that doesn't follow any of the international accessibility standards.

If you want to make PDFs accessible to all technologies (not just screen readers, but also assistive technologies for reading disorders, physical/mobility disabilities, and cognitive disabilities), then follow the PDF/UA-1 standard itself (https://www.iso.org/standard/64599.html).

Developers should access the PDF Association's resources. The Association is the appointed coordinator of all standards for all kinds of PDF files, so they are the only authority on PDFs and accessible PDFs.

• PDF Syntax Guide for PDF/UA-1 https://www.pdfa.org/resource/tagged-pdf-best-practice-guide-syntax/
• PDF/UA Reference Suite https://www.pdfa.org/resource/pdfua-reference-suite/
• Materhorn Protocol is a set of sample files that demonstrate accessibility. https://www.pdfa.org/resource/the-matterhorn-protocol/

If you want to improve Acrobat's ROL feature, make sure your PDFs have a logical architectural/construction reading order. This is different from the Tag Tree reading order that is required by the PDF/UA standard as the method of providing all accessibility. Since ROL doesn't recognize tags, it defaults to using the architectural reading order instead, which is the sequence of the content in the file's code. Read more about the different reading orders at this blog: https://www.pubcom.com/blog/2020_08-18_ReadingOrder/reading-orders.shtml

Ensuring the architectural reading order is good will at least improve how ROL voices the content. It's about the only thing you can do to improve how ROL provides the content to end users.

Hope this helps!

—Bevi Chagnon

Accessibility Specialist and US Delegate to the ISO PDF and PDF/UA standards committees.